Windows Vista's Personalization interface not as "clear" as other features

by Greg Shultz | Jun 22, 2006 7:00:00 AM

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating systems, Greg Shultz, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows, Clear

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Takeaway: Microsoft has endowed Vista with awesome new GUI and then made it more difficult to customize by making the Personalization interface awkward and inefficient.

I've been working with Windows Vista on a daily basis now for almost a month and for the most part, I've been impressed with everything I've encountered so far. Of course, the User Account Control dialog boxes can be a bit annoying, but I understand what they're designed to do and so have accepted them as a necessary evil for protecting my system from the those black hats on the Internet intent on subverting my computer.

However, I've encountered an incongruity with the Windows Vista's Personalization interface that seems to contradict the Clear part of Windows Vista's Clear, Confident, Connected slogan. And, try as I might, I haven't been able to reconcile this inconsistency in the same way that I've dealt with the omnipresent User Account Control dialog boxes. Microsoft has endowed Vista with awesome new GUI and then made it more difficult to customize by making the Personalization interface awkward and inefficient. It just doesn't make sense!

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Now, keep in mind that my concerns aren't meant to decry Microsoft or Windows Vista and I'm not saying that this item is a major problem with the new operating system. It's just something that's been bugging me.

So let me vent my concerns and see if I can elicit any information that can help me to make sense of this incongruity.

Clear, Confident, Connected

I'm sure that by now everyone is quite familiar with Windows Vista's slogan: "Clear, Confident, Connected; Bringing clarity to your world," which was first introduced when Microsoft announced that the official name of the new operating system was going to be Windows Vista at the Microsoft Global Business Conference in Atlanta, Ga., on Thursday, July 21, 2005. In the Windows Vista Beta 2 Technical Reviewer's Guide, each of these three words is backed up with a paragraph that further describes the goal of each point: Here's what it says about Clear:

Windows Vista puts a company's greatest asset--its people--at the forefront. The user experience in Windows Vista represents files and information in more intuitive ways, enabling users to find, manage, and organize the data they work with in ways that make sense to them.

Although the main gist of the Clear description has to do with data, it does imply that the user interface is designed so that it makes sense and is easier to use. Keep this in mind as I continue.

The Personalization interface

To customize, or personalize, the user interface in Windows XP, you simply right-click on the desktop, select Properties from the context menu, and you see the Display Properties dialog box--a one-stop multi-tabbed interface that makes quick work of customizing the user interface. Each one of the tabs, labeled Themes, Desktop, Screen Saver, Appearance, and Settings, contains a slew of configuration options. You sequentially select one or more tabs, change the appropriate settings, and click OK. What could be easier or clearer?

In Windows Vista, you right-click on the desktop, select Personalize from the context menu, and you see the Personalization interface, a Web-like page that resembles the Control Panel with a series of icons. The icons are titled Display Settings, Visual Appearance, Desktop Background, Screen Saver, Sound Effects, Mouse Pointers, and Theme.

On first glance, this new interface looks good, but once you begin looking around, the inconsistencies become apparent. For example, when you click Display Settings, a like-titled dialog box appears with a single tab containing the same settings contained on the Settings tab of the Display Settings dialog box in Windows XP. When you click OK, you're returned to the Personalization page. When you click Screen Saver or Theme, you see similar one-tab dialog boxes. In this example, you can see that a perfectly good multi-tabbed dialog box has been broken down into three single-tabbed dialog boxes increasing the number of places that you have to go and the number of steps that you have to take in order to customize the interface.

Clicking Sound Effects also brings up a one-tab dialog box for selecting a sound scheme. Clicking Mouse brings up the exact same multi-tabbed Mouse Properties dialog box that you find in Windows XP. Another oddity here is that in addition to being part of the Personalization page, the controls found in Mouse and Sound Effects are accessible straight from the Control Panel--while Mouse is identical, Sound Effects is called Sound Events and in the Audio Devices and Sound Themes dialog box.

Now, clicking Visual Appearance brings up a nice Web-like page for choosing and configuring a color scheme as well as enabling or disabling the transparent glass feature. However, this page also contains a link titled Open Classic Appearance Properties that brings up a one-tab dialog box contain the exact same controls found on the Appearance tab in Windows XP's Display Properties dialog box. Again, this increases the number of steps you have to take in order to customize the interface.

Desktop Background is also a very nice Web-like page for choosing and configuring wallpaper. However, it doesn't provide access to configuring Desktop icons--an option that you find at the bottom of the Desktop tab in Windows XP's Display Properties dialog box. Instead, you have to return to the Personalization page and then click the Change Desktop Icons link in the Tasks panel. When you do, another one-tab dialog box appears.

Beta glitches?

It could just be that these are incomplete items that are typical in beta software; however, I would have figured that at the Beta 2 stage all of these interface design inconsistencies would have been settled before the software was released to millions of users. As always, if you have comments or information to share about these incongruities, please take a moment to drop by the Discussion area and let us hear.

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